Future and current home and professional environments will contain a large number of controllable lighting devices for creation of ambient, atmosphere, accent or task lighting. These controllable lighting devices are often connected and controlled via a (wireless) network. These lighting devices can be controlled individually or in groups via a user interface of a smart device (e.g. a smartphone or a tablet pc). When groups of lighting devices are controlled, current lighting control network systems may not be able to guarantee synchronized control of these devices mainly because these devices are controlled via individual control commands. Group control commands may guarantee synchronicity, although they often have a bigger impact on the network and may therefore be prone to delaying the execution of the commands due to the limited network capability. These problems have a negative effect on the usability of the system and may result in a negative user experience.
U.S. application 2011/0068900 A1 relates to a method of and a system for commissioning and controlling lighting devices using location-based addresses instead of device or logical addresses. The lighting devices communicate over a wireless network using radio frequency communication protocols. The lighting devices are commissioned or grouped based on their respective locations in a building floor plan or a building architecture. The lighting devices are commissioned to respond to radio frequency communications that correspond to their respective locations. This imposed location-based architecture reduces the amount of transmitted data required to control the lighting devices and, thus, reduces the radio bandwidth required to control the lighting devices. In other words, controlling devices “multicast” instructions and controlled devices “listen” for instructions and act only upon instructions that correspond to their respective location. Hand shaking or two-way communication between the controlling devices and the controlled devices is not required.
U.S. application 2013/0293153 A1 relates to a lighting device wherein a primary control unit and a group of light units are arranged in a power supply chain, each light unit of said group being arranged for receiving commands from the primary control unit via a light unit interface of the light unit, and wherein each succeeding unit of the chain has a power input which is connected to a switchable power output of a respective preceding unit, each preceding unit being arranged to supply power at the power output only after initializing an address identification of the unit, and each succeeding unit being arranged to initialize an address identification of the unit upon being supplied with power at the power input. The address initialization of units of the lighting device within the lighting device is therefore simplified.